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Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Number of Concentraion Camp Deaths

The above document has appeared on certain blogs.

Does it show the number of former inmates of concentration camps who died after 1945?

Or, the number of inmates of concentration camps who died before 1945?

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Those are the "beurkundete" deaths. The word it uses, "beurkundet", means something along the lines of "authenticated", "notarised". It usually refers to the legal document you need if you want to claim an inheritance.

I don't know under which conditions death certificates were provided in the camps;

It might also explain the up-dated dates, as you could claim certificates at a much later date (as a relative)

Weird. I'm still trying to work out how many typewriters they actually used in that document (5?)

After the war was utter chaos - no transport, no food, no order. And that's the Allied half of Europe. In the Soviet half the Red Cross was completely blocked from accessing any of the camps at all. From the point of Soviet takeover onwards they could offer no figures at all, nothing.

Otherwise as a general rule post-conflict, people headed in every direction imaginable with no one keeping track of anything. Not that I view it as any variety of credible but in Night Elie Weisel said that they all just hit the road and followed the Germans because they preferred that to the Soviets. Which is curious in and of itself but regardless it doesn't augur well for Red Cross numbers post 1945. Paul Rassinier jumped off a train and cadged food off Americans.

I'm pretty sure those figures are what they say they are. I see that Rassinier's camp, Buchenwald, has 20,501 casualties. From what he describes in his book that sounds do-able. It's about 2500 a year, or a 50 a week, or 7 a day. I can come at that but I can't come at Auschwitz's absurd 1000-something a day. I mean honestly, that's just idiotic.

As far as I'm concerned your expression 'former inmates' could comfortably be replaced by 'freed inmates spread hither and yon with no one having any idea where exactly'.